The Dual Swords: Fate and Chaos
by MrAH2010
Summary: Adventure, excitement, thrills, these things were promised to the tens of thousands of people who purchased SAO like they had never experienced before, but the promise was only a sick experiment and the dream quickly turned into a nightmare. To make things worse, when the experiment goes wrong it becomes an exercise in misery, pain and, death. The dawn will be dark for all. (WH FB)
1. Link Start! (Cliche, IK kill me)

AN: Welcome to my SAO fanfic! Hope you enjoy!

This is a an inspiration of a short abandoned story that I had for SAO

Disclaimer: I don't own Sword Art Online or Warhammer Fantasy Battle/Age of Sigmar

* * *

It was a beautiful Sunday in Japan. Autumn was in full swing, the effects of the changing season on the nearby trees was evident, their leaves swirling around a young black-haired boy who found himself rushing through the city as fast as humanly possible. He was in such a hurry due to the fact his aunt had asked him to pick up some food for dinner that night. His sister would be cooking, and sure enough that meant salads and maybe something cooked on the side, if he was lucky.

Normally he would be glad to go, but today was the worst day. He had something _very_ important to get to at 1:00pm and he could not be late. This was why he found himself attempting to get back to his room at breakneck speeds, even though he had repeatedly warned his family for weeks beforehand to not bother him today. Luckily for him, the district from the markets to train station was very open and less developed than the urban jungle that was nearby Tokyo.

However, 'less developed' was only relative and the boy still was surrounded by massive skyscrapers, businessmen, tourists and a multitude of others as he attempted, and failed, to maneuver around them quickly without running into them. A few shouted at him as he collided with them and then continued on again, but he paid them no attention.

He managed to catch the train as the last of the passengers were boarding and the door was shutting, but he managed to squeeze onto the train before it departed. Being used to the confines of his room, and not used to such extended running, the boy dropped the groceries onto the ground and collapsed onto the closest seat. He was panting and his legs were shaking in a combination of exhaustion and anticipation. A few older men raised their eyebrows at his behavior, but otherwise said nothing else. A few girls were giggling at him, although he couldn't be sure if they were laughing at him or his actions.

Kazuto Kirigaya was by no means a bad looking boy, but most would not describe him as having _boyish_ looks either. His face was androgynous if one was to be polite, positively feminine if one was more honest or teasing him. His hairstyle didn't help him with this look either, it was long, long enough o threaten to cover his eyes if let to rest. However, this wasn't currently a problem as during his sprint to the train station the wind had swept it aside and it had been kept there by now dry sweat, allowing him a clear view of the train's participants.

Out of all of the ordinary people on the train there were three groups who were of importance to Kazuto. The first were the old men who were still looking at him as if they were expecting him to apologies to them for ruining their day for his admittedly loud and disruptive performance. This was something Kazuto had no intent to do and so he ignored them.

The second group was the group of girls who were still giggling at him. Although the laughter seemed to be infectious, they seemed to have stopped laughing at him and were simply unable to stop laughing at all. Kazuto was glad they didn't say anything to him, as he was not the best at social interactions and making friends. One of the old men shot them a harsh glare and purposely coughed, and they quickly stifled their laughter. However, it was the third group of people who interested Kazuto. They all held a sealed plastic box as if someone was going to steal it from them. Rightfully so, what was written on the box told even the oldest man, reclusive hermit or youngest child what pains they had gone through to get that box.

The copy of Sword Art Online each gamer clutched in their arms had only been released that very morning. The company had allowed their marketing campaign to get a tad out of control. Even though it meant amazing sales for the company it got in trouble from law enforcement across multiple prefectures as people had been in line for more than a month in extreme cases. In addition, the online versions of the game sold out within a few seconds due to the huge popular demand. There were rumors that the game had only 500,000 copies that were available across the globe.

Despite this, the amount of complaints and negative backlash against the shortage of games had practically zero effect on the company's pre-order sales for the 2nd wave of releases. They released a press statement about purposely artificially constraining the supply to prevent server and CPU overloads. The former was undoubtedly true, far too many games in the last decade had fallen to launch day server-side failures.

Sword Art Online, commonly known as SAO to people who had tired of saying the name constantly, represented the next generation of gaming technology. The Nerve Gear system gives a fully immersive virtual reality system with the ability to move in a 3-D environment and experience all five senses.

At least that was the marketing. However, the experience of actually full-diving was beyond description. The best that one could describe it was that they were _alive_ in the video game.

Kazuto knew this first hand, he had miraculously been able to get into the beta of SAO. During the month-long beta, the game had been the only thing that Kazuto had been able to think about. At school, it was all he was able to think about; he even dreamt about the game. He was obsessed with SAO and it broke his heart when the beta ended.

When the beta ended all of the players had been teleported where a game master had offered them if they could beat them they could continue to play. Obviously, this was designed to be impossible and it was probably the game masters' way to release their stress during the development cycle.

The game masters had beaten them to death with objects that shouldn't have been in the game's code at all. Kazuto had the experience of being killed by having the GM taking his health bar, and proceeded to beat him to death with it. Others had reported being shot by guns, dismembered, and thrown off skyscrapers. One had even reported being attacked by catapults, only to run outside of their range and then finding trebuchets waiting to crush him. Another had found himself face to face with the guns of the famous Shōwa period Yamoto-class battleships. Apparently, the sound had been so loud the company sent him personalized merchandise as an apology.

Kazuto was snapped out of his rambling thoughts about the game when the train announced that his stop was next. He gathered up his groceries, hopped on his bike he had left outside the station and raced home.

* * *

Stumbling into his house, he was greeted by his cousin, Suguha.

"Onii-chan, welcome back! That didn't take you very long. How come you don't move that quickly all the time?" she asked him.

Kazuto only gave a grunt to acknowledge his cousin and glanced at the clock on the wall to see how long he had taken. It read 12:56. " _I'm going to be late_!" he thought. He threw down the groceries on the counter, grabbed some snacks, and ran to his room. He barely heard his cousin scream at him that he had broken two of the eggs and to slow down. He couldn't have cared less as he entered and locked the door to his room. He turned on his computer, anxiously waiting for it to power on.

If he was in the state of mind to think straight, he would have realized that his strenous relationship with his cousin had slipped significantly in the past month. Ever since he had hacked into the national database and found that he had been adopted, he had distanced himself from his family. However, his cousin had never been told the reason for the increasing distance between herself and Kazuto, and the past month of near isolation had only made things worse.

Even though he had a state of the art computer with one of the fastest CPUs on the market and a SSD, each second it took to turn on felt like an eternity. Finally, he had grabbed his Nerve Gear, kept perfectly clean over its weeks of inactivity. He placed it on his head and watched the news while waiting for the last few seconds to pass until 1:00 pm. A local news station was on.

"In other news the construction of the Kanto earthquake monument has begun today." Kazuto began to sweat as he waited for the last news story to finish. "This morning, an incident occurred between construction workers and citizens waiting for the new game Sword Art Online. The ARGUS company has yet to admit responsibility for the incidents but has issued apologies that its buyers have caused. However, the ground-breaking ceremony took place at noon today as scheduled."

As Kazuto shook in his bed from the excitement the thought crossed him that the ground underneath him might break if he couldn't sit still. The news concluded, "The monument is expected to be complete by late summer next year in time for the 100-year anniversary of the earthquake. Well that all we have to day for the twelve-o-clo-" The news reporter was cut short as the clock had finally struck one and Kazuto shut of the TV. Lying down he spoke the two words that he had said in his dreams for over a month now. "Link Start!" He was greeted by the familiar streaks of color and the systems check and then an artificial female voice…

 **Welcome to W̕͟͢͠à̶r̷̡͟͝͞ha̶̵͡͠ḿ̶̧̕͠ Sword Art Online!**

* * *

Far away in a server room, Kayaba Akihiko was monitoring the launch of his game. However, everything was going horribly wrong. He had lost control of the process of the game. The cardinal system that the game was built upon had gone spiraling out of control. He was quickly running diagnostics, but the server was corrupting the files of every device it had come across. Fighting visual glitches in the file system of all places, he struggled to fix the issue.

Despite his brilliance with computer technology, he was not very into gaming, preferring to make instead of consume, only playing occasionally. Dozens of games sat installed, and being corrupted, on his personal computer, which had not been played in ages. As a result, he failed to recognize the significance the red, green, blue and purple patterns that occasionally flickered across his screen.

* * *

Hope you enjoyed! Please follow, and favorite if you enjoyed. Reviews are extremely appreciated as well. Until next time!


	2. A Brand New World, the Old World!

Disclaimer, I don't own Sword Art Online. I'll have to set up an auto script so on April 10th, 2104 it automatically removes the disclaimers, thanks Walt.

There will probably be less WH universe that is side-tangent to what a main character is experiencing for the 1st couple chapters as I set stuff up, so if you're here because SAO botched the idea and love WH hang tight for a bit.

Enjoy!

* * *

Lying down Kazuto spoke the two words that he had said in his dreams for over a month now. "Link Start!" He was greeted by the familiar streaks of color and the systems check and then an artificial female voice…

Welcome to SAO!

Chapter 2: Welcome to a New World, The Old World!

* * *

Kazuto was greeted with a multitude of options to customize his experience within the game. Kazuto had all of his preferences pre-loaded from the beta, but a new player could be quickly overwhelmed by this and lose track of what they should be doing. Luckily for them, since the beta a new feature had been added, a giant glowing Create Character button.

Kazuto tapped it with his find only to be surprised by a popup menu. The system has detected character data from a compatible save state. Load character data? Kazuto hurriedly clicked yes as it would save him precious time in painstakingly recreating his character from scratch again. The character was unlike himself in the real world. Masculine and handsome he was an example of the stereotypical adventurer. Though if he met anyone he knew from the real world they might make fun of him, it didn't matter when everyone else was designed this way.

The next screen was the username screen, and also had his name from the beta filled in already, Kirito. A slightly lazy portmanteau of his first and family names. Upon this he was given a final prompt. The only setting that is permanent is the username. All selections can be changed in the options menu. Appearances can be changed at certain NPC's for a fee. Welcome to Sword Art Online! And then the world went white.

Kirito woke up seconds later on a grassy field. He looked around and found himself in the same spot as where he started in the beta, the Town of Beginnings. It was a large town where all of the new players spawned and where they were resurrected when they died in the field or a dungeon. As it was only 1:02 there were only a few players on the field, most of them still customizing their characters and setting up the Nerve Gear. The few players present were clearly beta testers as well.

Kirito looked around for the tutorial shop where he could get his starting sword and armor. He quickly located it, being where all the other players were gathering.

Honestly the stand was a bit of a joke from the developers, all seemingly 30-year-old men with the humor of a child from the early 2010's. The stand itself was adorned with a crooked hand painted sign and old video games jokes about long gone games, the tackiness seeming to make sure that no-one could miss it.

A few old men ran the shop, their slowness at moving and handling making evident that any attempt to retrieve equipment would be painfully slow. Despite this, it was the only option; Kirito sighed and went over to the shop.

After a few minutes of attempting to get past the horde of people crowing the stand, he found himself holding the Beginner's Sword, and the Beginner's Chest Plate, neither were particularly impressive, each having only a small boost to attack and defense respectively. However, having them was easier than attempting to punch an enemy to death.

He could have picked up a bow, which would allow him to strike harder and from a distance, or a shield, which would give him a last line of defense. Abandoning his train of thought, Kirito shook his head at the thought.

Picking up the items would have set him closer to his carry limit, and being encumbered had drawbacks Kirito did not want to deal with. Plus, a bow could always run out of ammo at a crucial moment and even a simple breeze could cost you a shot and maybe a fight. While a shield was something most swordsmen tended to wield, Kirito's style of battle meant trying to stay more mobile and strike hard where the enemy least expected it. His defense would be the cold steel of the offense.

None of the starter items would had cost him any Col, the game's currency. If it were Col that was being used. Instead the classic Gold-Silver-Copper (GSC) system was used. Kirito was glad to see that, in the beta it had been slightly inconvenient to get used to the currency and the GSC system was perfectly fine anyways. Asking the shop keepers, he found that

1 Gold Crown (g) = 20 Silver Shillings (s) = 240 Brass Pennies (p)

1 Silver Shilling = 12 Brass Pennies.

Odd to call them crowns, shillings and pennies, but it made no difference. Also, why brass? Sure it was close enough to bronze, but why change it?

Ignoring it Kirito equipped the sword and armor and accepted the beginning quest from the store merchant. Simply designated as the Tutorial Quest it was a simple if not annoying task. A fetch quest, the bane of all MMO players. This one involved retrieving a few boar pelts from the nearby fields for the owners of the shop. Kirito chuckled at the memories of the quest in the beta.

The marketing played the world as 'fully immersive with all quests being meaningful', that had seemed fine until the ramifications of the system set in. The original quest in the beta had actually been meant to supply the shop with the materials to make the beginning weapons. Kayaba had attempted to create a supply system for even the NPC vendors to make the world seem as real as possible.

What got overlooked was the ridiculous amount of fetch quests that got spawned and never were completed. Even with only 1,000 players to supply, even the beginning shop ran out of starter equipment. It was clear that the developers were not masters at economics and that had taken a while to work out.

Accepting the quest, the lore introducing the world popped up. Kirito glanced to where it was, tucked into the corner. It was amazing how much lore and detail went into this game. ARGUS claimed that over 10,000 hours went into graphics and lore writing. Considering that the game was the life project of its creator Akihiko Kayaba and that he started developing the game over 10 years ago it seemed likely. Kirito couldn't help himself but skim through the now familiar lore before dismissing it.

* * *

[You are now in the T̶́̀͢h̶͘e̡͢ ̶̸̧҉E̷̶͝ḿ̕p̷͞͠i͢r̴̷̷̶e̸̸̛͞ the world of Aincrad. It is a bastion of light and hope against the eternal darkness and chaos that surrounds everything. Over two millennia ago, S͢͡ì͟͝g̸͡m̢̢̕͟a̷͏̸̵̕r̴̸͜͞ ̸̛͞H̵̢̧̨҉ȩ̸͏̕ļ̸̡ UNREADABLE_STRING]

* * *

Despite the fact that Kirito was barely paying attention to the lore, only the blind could miss the glaring bug.

'I wonder What happened here? This was working normally in the beta.' Squinting to read the corrupted text he wondered aloud, "The Empire? What is-"

He was cut off from his musings by a two players barreling into him. Head spinning, he groaned and sat up and looked to his assailants, or at least tried to. The first, and easiest to notice, was the man who now lie over him. He had long reddish-pink hair which extended down to his shoulders and was held out of his eyes by a red and yellow bandana. His face was plastered with mixture of embarrassment and eagerness as he greeted Kirito.

"HellomynameisKlein! Sorry for running into you but do you think you could help me and my friend out?" he shouted into Kirito's face.

Kirito was taken aback by the forwardness of the request. He squirmed his way out from underneath the man and glanced over to the person who was standing nearby. It was another man, or more accurately a boy, his appearances made him seem like a small child.

Kirito assumed that either he must have chosen an appearance close to his real life one or was planning on roleplaying an agility class character. The latter was more likely, as there was no real advantage in being so small otherwise, as the stats in game did not reflect the physical build of your avatar.

The boy had some baby fat still on his face and had a mop of messy brown hair. Brown eyes excitedly shone as if he was pleading Kirito to say yes. Klein saw the glances that Kirito threw at his partner and moved to introduce him.

"This is Ryozu, he and I just met, but we've agreed to party together for now. Strength in numbers, right?" Kline smiled, and then suddenly grew a little anxious. The emotion system in SAO wasn't exactly the best at allowing its users to hide their inner emotions. He continued, "I was hoping that you could show us around; you look like someone who knows what they're doing," stepping back and awaiting the answer.

Kirito's first instinct was to say no. He had seen this pattern before, at the beginning of a new MMO, players would either head off by themselves and get the first, and sometimes the only, attempt at the rare and unique quests in a game. He himself had fallen behind on the first day of a MMO due to helping new players. Luckily for Kirito it wasn't the beta for SAO, it was the re-release to a dying MMO that had been popular almost 15 years ago. The reboot was its last attempt at survival. World of Warhammer or something like that.

Kirito was about to say no to them when he noticed the two looking at him with pleading eyes. Klein looked like an absolute idiot; trying his best, and failing, to persuade him with his looks. However, Ryozu's look drew Kirito. His eyes seeming massive due to the pleading and the small face that framed them; they glistened and shone as if his life depended on the response.

Kirito knew deep down that leaving them alone would be a death sentence. Although the developers had claimed that the difficulty progression was fair, the combination of the newness and unfamiliarity with the full dive technology meant that the fair difficulty curve quickly became a steep cliff where players would hopelessly smash their head against the base in the attempt to have fun and learn the game.

During the beta, the 1,000 testers had reached 50,000 deaths within the first 2 days. Looking around Kirito saw some other beta testers greeting and helping some of the new players, while others turned their back to them and went off into the fields alone. He knew from the begging eyes of Ryozu that he couldn't just say no to them, that and had an instinct to say yes due to the fact that he had seen multiple bugs and changes in the game already.

Scratching the back of his head, Kirito hesitantly replied, "I guess I can help you gu-" his sentence cut off by Klein and Ryozu shouting for joy. They had grabbed Kirito and started to run off to the fields when Kirito noticed something particular about the two. He hoped that his suspicion wasn't true, but he had a sinking feeling that it was.

He asked the two slowly, "Where exactly are your weapons and armor?" The frozen faces of the two told him exactly what had happened. The best-case scenario was that he had paired with a pair of excited, if not forgetful, new players. The alternative was that he had agreed to lead around a group of airheads.

Ryozu attempted to stutter out an excuse, "W-well you s-see…"

Klein jumped in before he had the chance to continue. "We were going to both choose brawler class?" he said, the end of his statement sounding more like a question as if to contradict himself.

Kirito's response was only to close his eyes, tale a deep breath, run one hand through his hair to calm himself, and simply pointing the other at the beginner's shop. The two weaponless warriors didn't need a second clue and two immediately ran over to the shop, thankful that Kirito simply didn't leave.

Soon Klein and Ryozu were both equipped with the Beginner's Sword and Beginner's Chest Plate. Ryozu had a Beginner's Short Bow strapped behind his back as well. Kirito and his newfound companions stood at the edge of the Town of Beginnings searching for a good hunting ground.

However, while passing through Kirito kept picking up on things that had changed, small things such as a change in architecture was odd, but not concerning. The vaguely Mediterranean-Medieval look had changed to a much more Gothic look with simpler wooden buildings dotting the town.

What was off was the fact that everything seemed too small and dingy. No grand buildings to fanfare the beginning of a new adventure, instead it looked like some random village off in the corner of a floor. Additionally, it was getting super crowded as more and more players spawned in. Putting it past him, he exited the gates.

The town itself was located on a small hill. It was only about 150 meters in height. Despite this, it still offered a commanding view of the nearby area. The closest areas were full of farmland, the NPC farmers busy tending to their crops and livestock. A large stone road snaked its way through the fields, where the farmer's children were waiting to offer passing players the opportunity to complete minigames for coppers.

Past the last farm was a meadow full of soft rolling hills covered in windswept grass, wild flowers and dotted by the occasional tree. In addition, there were groups of animals scattered throughout the hills. Eventually the area stretched on until the trees eventually started to dot the landscape where the farms couldn't quite reach. A large river cut through the landscape and the town, meandering through the valley.

It was the animal groups that interested Kirito. He knew from the beta that there were three types of animals in the valley. The first were the deer, large skittish animals that never attacked, but often dropped high amounts of loot. The wolves, fierce pack hunters which were mostly farmed for early experience. And finally, there were the boars, the middle ground between the two.

The packs could be easily identified. The deer would try to stay away from anything that moved and were very quick about doing so. The wolves attempted to chase the former, not wanting to fight boars who came equipped with some rather nasty tusks. This meant that the still packs of animals were their target, generally remaining still and passive until provoked by players or desperate wolves.

Locating the largest nearby boar group Kirito signaled the two to follow. He explained to the two of the basics of fighting in SAO. He began, "Fighting in SAO isn't at all like fighting with a sword in real life. There are certain abilities called sword skills that are used to assist you in causing damage to an opponent. All you have to do is to start a swing and the system will detect your movements and follow through for you."

Kirito demonstrated by preforming a basic sword skill, Horizontal Arc. His sword started to glow a bright orange and suddenly flashed from left to right across Kirito, leaving a small light trail behind.

Sheathing his sword, he continued "You can attempt to fight without the basic sword skills, and you can succeed in preforming otherwise impossible strikes on an enemy. However, I wouldn't try it until you had some more experience with the sword. It would be about as effective as the brawler route you wanted to take." He smirked, teasing the two.

Ryozu's face immediately flushed while Klein attempted to come up with another excuse. Kirito could feel that something stupid was about to come out of Klein's mouth and thought, When is he going to realize he only makes things worse for himself? Luckily for Klein's pride and Kirito's ears, Klein had only managed to stutter out a few 'ums' and 'ahs' when the first boars came into sight.

Everything was forgotten as Klein and Ryozu ran towards the pack. As they got closer they both slowed down, both turning around to check if they should be charging in. Suddenly Kirito, who had been right on their heels, rushed passed them. As he passed, he turned to the two with the largest grin on his face and shouted, "Well, what are you waiting for?"

"Let's go!"

Kirito charged forward and swung his sword at the boar that stood in front of him, his sword glowing as the sword skill activated. It caught the boar under the snout and sent it back, its health quickly plummeting as it was sent flying back.

The boar was down but not out; enraged that something had interrupted its meal, it got up and charged. Kirto waited for the boar, poising his sword as to meet it head on. He sent a powerful thrust through the head of the boar, depleting the rest of its HP and covering himself in a shower of blue shards. He received a pop up with the EXP and a loot notification, a boar skin. He dismissed the loot screen and glanced over to his team mates.

Ryozu was doing fairly well, Kirito caught sight of him just finishing off the boar, although his health had taken a few hits. Still, it very impressive the first time. Klein on the other hand was dispatching the boar in a unique manner to put it lightly. After hitting it initially with a strike, he had failed to activate his next attack as a sword skill and had only done glancing damage to the boar. The boar's charge connected with the man and he was sent flying backwards. The boar geared up for another charge, stamping its feet into the ground it went flying towards the downed player.

Ryozu had grabbed his bow and attempted to shoot to bow in an attempt to draw the boar away from Klein. He had managed to graze the boar sending it down below half health, but the boar had its charge locked on Klein now. Luckily at the last moment, Klein came out of his stupor and realized the boar was almost upon him. Unfortunately for him, the distance between the two was so little that he could only use his sword like a small pike and hope that the boar would skewer itself to death.

What Kirito saw next was one of the greatest moments of the proverbial beginner's luck that he had ever seen, although Klein would claim that it was his tactical thinking that saved his skin. The tip of Klein's sword had somehow caught the throat of the boar, instantly shattering it. As the crystals around him dissolved, Klein looked in amazement from his sword to where the boar formerly stood, speechless. Ryozu looked as if he was about to faint, barely able to stay still from the excitement, and his eyes full of joy. Kirito had his jaw agape, barely able to believe how lucky Klein had gotten. He had been preparing to finish the boar skin collecting with Ryozu and go collect Klein from the Town of Beginnings. That boar had been charging fast enough to kill him, or come pretty near close. Even if it hadn't straight up killed the man, it would have been almost certain that he would have eventually died; they hadn't brought any healing items with them.

Suddenly Klein's voice rang out, "That was AWESOME!" It seemed that he was totally oblivious that he had almost been killed by the tutorial monster. Ryozu ran over to Klein cheering him on as well.

Kirto walked over to him sarcastically congratulating the man, "Congrats, you've defeated your first enemy." Klein looked up to thank Kirito, but he just kept talking. "Well, it is the weakest thing in the game, coming in just in under where you stand on that ranking." Klein seemed stunned by the insult that Kirito had thrown at him. Kirto continued to glare at Klein but the grin emerging on his face soon betrayed his act. He smirked and added, "You got lucky, but I have to admit, it was pretty impressive show you put on there."

Klein attempted to defend himself, "It was NOT luck; it was... it was my amazing battle strategy!"

Kirito raised an eyebrow and thought, 'He actually managed to sound half-way confident in saying that'. He was about to warn him again, but could only chuckle, "C'mon let's go, we still have some more boars to kill." Kirito guided Klein on killing his next boar, and Klein soon got the hang of it. He then helped Ryozu on using his bow. The fact that he had even hit the charging boar on his first try meant he knew how to use one from the real world or had gotten lucky. Soon enough the field was filled with the sweet sounds of swinging swords and shattering boars. With the three of them combined, the group had finished completing the quest in no time.

The three soon found themselves in front of a messenger NPC here to collect their goods from them. Ryozu was confused when the NPC asked them for their boar skins. He thought that they were going to take them back to town. Kirto then explained that this was the of the things from the new advanced economic simulation.

According to the logic of the simulation certain NPCs 'felt' that it was cheaper use other NPCs to collect the item once the danger of collecting said item had passed. This made sense in game and in a meta way. It would be 'cheaper' to employ a delivery boy than a hero (the players) to haul back random items. To the player it got rid of a huge amount of busy work that MMOs traditionally relied on.

Similarly, escort quests also had NPCs of certain personalities only require escort until the danger had passed. As Kirito put it, "Now you don't have to escort the baker's cousin's daughter's husband all the way out to a crappy shack in Timbuctoo, you only had to go most of the way and be go on with your day."

This was one of the best game mechanics that had come out of the development. The company had generally been super secretive over its development promises. Even to the point where before starting the game, every beta-tester had been forced to verbally read and agree to a non-disclosure agreement. Obviously, the nature of the internet and the revolutionary features of the game meant that the company's secrets were anonymously leaked within the first week.

Coming back to the group, they had been exploring the meadows around the town and fighting the monsters enjoying their time. They had even managed to kill enough animals to level up. Klein and Ryozu celebrated their victory while Kirito chuckled and showed them how to invest their stat points.

* * *

Soon the mid-afternoon sun hung in the sky, shining down upon the players in the field. At first Kirito had the time of his life, at least since the beta. Able to forget the real world he was free, able to become anything that he wished. A wandering mercenary, a heroic knight, or perhaps a stealthy archer. Anything was possible.

All good things must come to an end, as his experience was interrupted by an increasing number of concerns. First was the visual bugs. Often creatures would glitch out and die randomly. Not only that, often the creatures they killed by had were starting to remain as a corpse and not shatter into the crystalline structure that was the default death animation.

Second was the overcrowding problem, it seemed that there were packs of players everywhere seeking to complete the quest, but it seemed that the fields were swarmed with them now. Perhaps another 1st day launch bug.

Something else was off and it was deeply disconcerting, but he couldn't manage to put his finger on it.

Breaking him out of his thoughts, Klein sat up from where he had apparently fallen asleep. Dreary eyed, he yawned and mumbled, "Man I'm hungry, I ordered a pizza for later, but it's still going to be a couple hours before it arrives. Can we get some fake food to trick my brain into thinking its full?"

Mulling it over, Kirito decided it was time to go back to town, and resupply. There was nothing to do out here, and the village of Horunka was quite far compared to the Town of Beginnings. He would swing back and find a new quest and maybe see Klein and Ryozu off, or maybe stick with them. Playing in a party was fun and did have advantages.

Getting up from his resting spot, he aquilesced, "I guess we can head back to the Town of Beginnings."

Ryozu sprung up, ready for more adventure. "Great! Lets go!" and with that he started running back to town.

Klein laughed at his antics, he might not be old, in fact his friends considered him the wild one, but compared to Ryozu he felt like it sometimes. "Wait up! There's a fast travel." He shouted to the dot disappearing in the distance. He turned to Krito and asked, "There is a fast travel, right?"

There was one, and Kirito explained to Klein where it was in the menu as they waited for Ryozu to drag himself back to the two. He told Klein to go ahead and that he would catch up in a second.

However, Klein sat looking at the menu in confusion, "What did you say the town was called?"

Kirito was going through his inventory menu wondering why there was so many different designs on the copper coins he had received, looked up with a confused look and replied, "The Town of Beginnings, there might be city sectors unlocked, but it should be the _only_ fast travel destination you have unlocked."

Klein pointed at his screen, "That's not what it's called. Its called… Grenz… Grenzstadt?" he slowly said the name, the foreign name rolling off his tongue awkwardly.

At this Kirito opened up his menu and selected the fast travel menu, and sure enough Grenzstadt was the only option there. He had noticed that during the whole day things had been changed. He had no idea why they would change them, but at the end of the day it was obiously the town they ahd come from. Selecting it for fast travel he was greeted by the message.

ERROR: CHOS213AF31

FAST_TRAVEL_UNAVAILABLE

That was odd. He called to Klein if he could fast travel, and the results were similar. Ryozu had the same issue when he eventually dragged himself back to their location.

Kirito decided to call a GM, there was something wrong, the bugs on the beginning launch were starting to grate on his nerves. This hadn't happened during the beta, why now? And it wasn't a server-side problem; it wasn't lag. It was legitimate problems with the game. As he received a message that no GMs were available, he sighed and closed his menu in frustration.

"I suppose that the GMs are available, I guess we better get back to town." and with that they set off for the re-named Town of Beginnings, now Grenzstadt.

* * *

Below Grenzstadt, rank and corruption was beginning to take hold, for the most vile of all the fantast creatures in this new world had just arrived below the town and its surroundings. The Skaven.  
Dirty, disgusting, and cowardly. These vermin posed a great threat to all other sentient life, for in numbers they were ambitious, ravenous and overwhelming. A small group of Slave Rats, Clan Rats and a few more 'respectable' Skaven types made their way under the city. They had been forced to flee after being cut off by a group of Dwarves in the mountains and were now stuck stranded and hungry.

Currently, 12* of the remaining oh most prestigious-powerful Skaven were debating-panicking over their current situation.

The evident leader (biggest) Skaven was busy having a panic attack after being told there was no food left and that they had eaten most of the Slave-Rats already. "NO NO! WHAT DO WE DO? WE DIE-STARVE WITHOUT FRESH MEAT-BLOOD."

Another Skaven came up to the self-proclaimed leader running his paws over his body as he reported, "SLAVE-SCOUT TELL ME OF MANY MAN-THINGS ON SURFACE NOW, KILL-DEATH THEM ALL AND THEN WE EAT-FEAST."

This was met with chitters of excitement as the realization set in around the table.

The smallest rat was not as excited; he was cowardly, (more so than usual) and protested "NO NO! THINK WE DIE-DIE IF WE ATTACK-FIGHT. HUMAN-THINGS SCARY-STRONG, AND WE HAVE NO SLAVE-SHEILDS."

While this was a fair point, as their low numbers meant that the Skaven were most likely to rout immediately in battle, but Skaven are anything but reasonable. The leader was in no mood for this cowardly rat to tell him his newest meal of human-thing would have to wait.

"YOU KNOW-THINK NOTHING!" he screamed as he lurched forward and sunk his razor sharp fangs into the surprised and scared Skaven. As he felt the life go out of this pathetic excuse for true-Skaven, he tasted the meat on his corpse. He was starving and decided to enjoy this meal while it lasted. Soon others joined in on the hunger relief with absolutely no concern for the fallen Skaven.

Finishing, he declared "WE SURPRISE THE STUPID MAN-THINGS, NOT FIGHT-DEATH THEM. WE MURDER-SLAY THEM AND EAT THEIR FLESH!"

As soon as they heard, the other 10 other remaining Skaven scuttered to tell what little troops they could find to prepare ambushes. Excited chitters and praises to the Great Horned One could be heard in the Underways, and the surface dwellers had a nasty surprise coming for them.

* * *

*I'm aware the # is 13, but the last seat is saved for the Horned Rat himself, so 12 physical Skaven.

Anyways, did you enjoy? Feel free to follow or review if you did. Hope to see you soon!


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